Forbes power list: Putin beats Obama

Russian President Vladimir Putin has knocked President Barack Obama off of the top spot on Forbes’s 2013 World’s Most Powerful People List.

The magazine explained Putin earned the No. One ranking “because he so frequently shows his strength at home and on the global stage,” citing his involvement in negotiations with Syria over chemical weapons and NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s asylum in Russia. This is the first time Putin is at the top of the list, coming in third in 2012.

Obama, who ranked at the top of the Forbes list every year — except 2010 — since it began in 2009, fell to the No. 2 spot out of 72 “heads of state, financiers, philanthropists and entrepreneurs who truly run the world.” One person picked for every 100 million people on the Earth, the magazine said.

The magazine said recent hurdles Obama has faced such as the government shutdown as well as the two leaders wrestling over Syria strategies and the NSA leaks has led to “shifting individual power dynamics.”

“Putin has solidified his control over Russia while Obama’s lame-duck period has seemingly set in earlier than usual for a two-term president,” the magazine said.